Last week when we headed out to the car, I looked around at all the huge piles of grubby looking snow and told my husband, "It looks like all the neighborhood has thrown out its piles of dirty laundry!"

After two weeks of time, manpower, money, aircraft, and ships searching for the wreckage of the lost flight...what if the large object seen in the ocean by satellite turned out to be a highway billboard blown away by a cyclone - a billboard advertising Toyota or some other product?

Maybe the search efforts would be over and everyone would go home.

Don

John 14:6Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me."

There are many lists of analogies online and many are hysterically funny!

Back to the piano playing, Verna. I was a terrible piano student, no kidding, but in high school for fun, I memorized several bars of the "Warsaw Concerto," so that at parties when they'd often ask me to play, I'd sit down at the piano and belt out those memorized bars loudly and with great flourish. When I finished with all I knew (which only took a few seconds), I'd get up and with a dismissive gesture, announce, "That's enough of that stuff! Let's PARTY !!"

Thankfully, they never called my bluff!

Mariane Holbrook

"For you are dead to yourself and your life is hid with Christ in God."Colossians 3:3

After two weeks of time, manpower, money, aircraft, and ships searching for the wreckage of the lost flight...what if the large object seen in the ocean by satellite turned out to be a highway billboard blown away by a cyclone - a billboard advertising Toyota or some other product?

Maybe the search efforts would be over and everyone would go home.

Don

Maybe. Sigh. Keep the candle burning and pray for closure for the families.

BeachGrandma wrote:There are many lists of analogies online and many are hysterically funny!

Back to the piano playing, Verna. I was a terrible piano student, no kidding, but in high school for fun, I memorized several bars of the "Warsaw Concerto," so that at parties when they'd often ask me to play, I'd sit down at the piano and belt out those memorized bars loudly and with great flourish. When I finished with all I knew (which only took a few seconds), I'd get up and with a dismissive gesture, announce, "That's enough of that stuff! Let's PARTY !!"

Thankfully, they never called my bluff!

Sorry, BeachGrandma, I am going to blow your cover. You are just toooooo modest. And here's a video someone took of you all those years ago, showing us what you were really up to back then! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niIE6HmQCXI

Don't I wish! I could practice now throughout all eternity and still not play it well, Edy.

I've been meaning to ask you, Edy, which of the Scandinavia countries you most identify with. If it's Norway, I wonder if you've read "Bold Spirit," the account of Helga Estby's walk across America around 1896. I've just finished it and thought of you the whole time. Faced with losing her homestead in the eastern Washington state, Helga, the mother of 8, accepted a challenge to walk across America for a $10,000 prize which in today's currency would be about $278,000. It won't hurt the story line to tell you all that once she arrived in New York with her daughter who accompanied her on the walk, the sponsor refused to pay the money. They ended up penniless, without even train fare to get back home after their full year of being away. But even that was nothing compared to the anger and alienation that was thrown at them when they finally were able to return home. Two of their children had died of diphtheria while Helga and Clara were gone and neighbors and relatives refused to even listen to Helga talk about the trip. She was one of the earliest fighters for the women's vote and later her relatives burned all of Helga's papers that she'd planned to use in writing a book about the experience. She was persona non grata in the worst kind of way. It's a fascinating book, though redundant, likely because there wasn't much information left for the author to use, so she kept repeating herself over and over and surmising that Helga must or must not have done or thought things. But imagine your children setting fire to all that history, no matter whether you agreed that your mother was in the wrong for leaving for a year her husband and 7 of her 8 children, including a 2-year-old. One thing for sure, Edy, is that Norwegians as portrayed by Helga and her daughter, were physically very plucky and emotionally very secure, not to mention their courage and determination in the midst of unbelievable hardship.

I laughed when I read that Helga prepared lutefisk for Christmas every year. LOL

Mariane Holbrook

"For you are dead to yourself and your life is hid with Christ in God."Colossians 3:3

Thank you for the book review, BeachGrandma! That is history I hadn't heard, before. What a sad story for all concerned!

As much as I love my Swedish relatives, I don't seem to have the same attachment to Sweden. Norway, however, for some strange reason, feels like my once-upon-a-time home. Perhaps it has something to do with our strain of Lutheran heritage. Historically, we were considered "low church" pietists in the Haugean tradition. He was like an Elisha in Norway, the Lord called him while he was out in the field, and he spent his life walking all over Norway (when he wasn't in prison because, not part of the state church, he wasn't allowed to preach), teaching people to read so they could read the Bible.

Wikipedia's brief overview just scratches the surface. When I was a young 13 or 14 year old, I read his biography from my Swedish grandpa's library, and consider that a milestone in my own spiritual walk.

Here's something of interest from my email inbox. I'm posting to see if those strings of letters produce the pictures that came with the words!

YOU WILL DEFINITELY GAIN SOME EXTRA KNOWLEDGE AFTER YOU FINISH READING THIS MAIL.

Hmmm...so, a "jiffy" is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.

We don't hear that word very much anymore. I recall my grandmother using it quite often, though. At the time it seemed to mean "quickly" or "a few minutes".

Wow! If it's only 1/100th of a second, grandma could have done the job a hundred times before I heard what she was saying.

Okay...what is the definition of "smidgen"? Grandma used that word too. It seems that word got lost over the decades, but it was dug up and used by Obama a few weeks ago. I don't think he knows what it means either.

Don

John 14:6Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me."

Don, my family in upstate New York used/uses "smidgen" and "Jiffy," regularly. I notice that "Jiffy" is used here in the South all the time, too. But on second thought, maybe they're referring to Jiffy Cornbread Mix. "Smidgen" means a "tiny bit" as in a smidgen of cream of tartar.

The only person I ever knew to have her name spelled the same backwards and frontwards was Marge Pegram, whose daughter was in one of John's high school chemistry classes. Putting the two words together, it spells the same both ways, which to me is most unusual. If I read my name backwards it would be KoorblohenairaM (which if read fast out loud sounds like "Cool, she blows hot air." Anyone who touches that line must have a death wish.

Mariane Holbrook

"For you are dead to yourself and your life is hid with Christ in God."Colossians 3:3

That name, Marge Pegram, sounds like a good one for an Agatha Christie mystery, BeachGrandma, the name itself implicated in the clues!

Have any of you tried rearranging the letters of your full name to see if you can make out a message? One of my brothers has done it, and it can be quite funny. I'll have to remember to ask him what his turned out to be.

Carole, It's nice to have you drop by. I have a slew of first cousins I do not know on one side of the family. It was interesting to go to a funeral and meet a bunch of people that looked a bit like my daddy. Somehow though, the genealogy bug has never bitten me.

For anyone who would love to read a beautiful poem and be inspired that spring IS coming, you can check out my FB page or Mariane's for a gorgeous poem by our very own Mariane!

There's not too much to get out of my name spelled backwards, but you can find some "time" in there and a "Rev." For the kids I taught who usually left one "L" off my last name, I told them to just remember the opposite of heaven.

Edy, thanks for the cold remedy suggestions. I must admit my own very favorite is Afrin, but I quit using it after three days because it is addictive--or so I've read. Anyway, I surely felt better when I used it!